James Craig - The Circus

The progression had been smooth, effortless, almost trouble-free. He had been well on the way to enjoying a near-perfect career in public service. There had even been a Queen’s Policing Medal in Her Majesty’s New Year’s Honours List, with the promise of more to come if he kept his nose clean.

And then he’d allowed his head to be turned by a smarmy politician named Christian Holyrod. The mere thought of the Mayor of London now made him grimace. He should have known better! Running the MPS — the Metropolitan Police Service — was a bit like trying to run Tesco after a lifetime of running a corner shop. Sure, it had fast-tracked his knighthood, but he would have got one of those anyway.

Even in the beginning, Sir Chester wasn’t dumb enough to think he could handle a job like this. But he wasn’t smart enough to say no either. So now, at a time of life when the most taxing part of his job should be giving a speech to the local Rotarians, he instead found himself having to deal with one ridiculous high-profile mess after another.

Even by the Met’s standards, today’s fiasco was quite something. Only with immense effort did Sir Chester manage to pick up the sheet of white A4 paper on which was typed a summary of the Horatio Mosman case. Good God, he thought sadly, what was going on here? You would never get this kind of nonsense up in Wakefield or Batley. Pining for a return to the real world populated by normal people, he dropped the report back on to his desk and looked up.

‘Well?’

‘Well what , sir?’ Despite her best intentions, Commander Carole Simpson couldn’t help but sound snappy. Getting dragged out of bed for a crisis meeting with the Commissioner was never the best way to start your day. She had yet to have any breakfast; it would take a double espresso at least before her mood approached anything resembling decent.

Sir Chester shifted uneasily in his seat. One of the other things he hated about the Met was the uppity nature of many of the senior officers. Especially the women. Staff in the provinces seemed to find it easier to know their place, and to do what they were told. ‘Well,’ he said slowly, ‘we have a child-’

‘Teenager,’ Simpson corrected him.

‘Young adult,’ giggled Simon Shelbourne, Sir Chester’s Communications Director, who was standing in the corner behind Simpson.

The Commander turned sideways in her seat, in order to be able to see both men at once. This was her first chance to get a good look at Shelbourne: a weedy-looking guy in a Richard James slate-grey pinstripe suit with a ridiculous lime-green shirt. Although in his mid-thirties, the PR man looked about twelve, with pale blue eyes blinking behind chunky burgundy-coloured spectacles, sandy hair and a chin that looked like it had never seen a five o’clock shadow.

All the same, the boyish clothes-horse had more than a decade in tabloid journalism behind him, culminating in a year as Editor of the Sunday Witness (dubbed ‘the Sunday Witless ’ by rivals). After raising the circulation by more than half a million copies, which was no mean feat in the desperately tough weekend-newspaper market, Shelbourne had surprised colleagues and critics alike by crossing over to the dark side and becoming a PR man. Even more surprising was his choice of new employer. Rather than making a killing working for some American investment firm or Chinese technology company, he had joined the police force, signing on as spinner-in-chief for Sir Chester Forsyth-Walker.

Amongst other things, Forsyth-Walker’s predecessor as Commissioner, Luke Osgood, had been deemed politically unacceptable and therefore ‘unsafe’ when it came to handling the media. Sir Chester, on the other hand, was expected to keep a low profile and, with Shelbourne’s help, say and do nothing that would contradict or embarrass the Mayor.

‘Let’s continue.’ The Commissioner glared at both of them in turn. ‘We have Horatio Mosman, who was murdered by a bomb. And we have Mr. .’

‘Marc Harrington,’ Shelbourne said quietly. ‘Marc with a c. No k.’

‘Mr Marc Harrington,’ said Sir Chester, through gritted teeth, ‘no k, who was shot in the face presumably by the same person who later blew up young Horatio.’ He paused, waiting for another interjection. When none was forthcoming, he ploughed on. ‘Needless to say, the media are all over this.’ Shelbourne nodded solemnly. ‘And the good people of London need some reassurance that this. . this crazy person is going to be caught quickly and with a minimum of fuss.’

‘We have a press conference scheduled for an hour’s time,’ volunteered Shelbourne.

‘So,’ Sir Chester now gave Commander Simpson his most no-nonsense stare, ‘what have you got for me?’

Now it was Carole Simpson’s turn to shift in her seat. She picked up the sheet of paper on the Commissioner’s desk. ‘The basics are contained in this initial summary report. Our investigation is currently underway, but it is still at a very early stage. We will begin interviewing the family members later this morning.’

A grim expression crossed Sir Chester’s face as a spasm of pain shot across his lower back. Bloody slipped disc . Not that anyone gave him any sympathy. At last he was going into hospital to get it sorted next week. ‘One thing that is not in the report,’ he remarked, once the pain had passed, ‘is why those bomb technicians didn’t manage to stop the bloody thing going off?’

‘We won’t be going there in the presser,’ Shelbourne said hastily.

‘No, but the bloody journalists will,’ Sir Chester huffed.

‘Don’t worry,’ Shelbourne reassured him. ‘I will jump in if it gets tricky.’

Which it will , Simpson decided.

‘It’s just us two?’ Sir Chester asked, glancing at Simpson.

‘Yes,’ Shelbourne replied. ‘I don’t think we need the Commander to be present at this time.’

‘Fine by me,’ said Simpson. She felt more than a little relieved at not having to face the assembled journalists. There had been a time when she liked nothing more than parading in front of the media. Not any longer. Ever since her husband’s conviction for fraud had stopped her career in its tracks, her need for a public profile had evaporated. ‘By the way, Horatio wasn’t blown up by the bomb fastened around his neck,’ she explained. ‘Indeed, there wasn’t a bomb around his neck. There was, however, a bomb that had been placed under the sofa.’

‘And how, in the name of God, did we manage to miss that?’ Chester’s face began turning pink. ‘What were your officers doing?’

‘They were on the scene merely by accident,’ Simpson said quietly, ‘and tried to assist the victim at great risk to themselves.’

‘Didn’t get blown to smithereens though, did they?’

You make it sound like you wish they had, Simpson thought angrily. ‘This was a terrible act of violence,’ she said, ‘culminating in the tragic loss of a young life. However, we are very fortunate that there were not any more fatalities.’

‘That’s great,’ said Shelbourne, scribbling furiously in a spiral notebook. ‘The tragic loss of a young life — we can use that. And add something along the lines of the public can rest assured that we will be devoting all necessary resources to catching the perpetrator — no, the evil perpetrator .’ He grinned at his boss. ‘That’s really all you need to say.’

‘Fine,’ said Sir Chester wearily.

‘After that, I’ll give them the tip-off hotline number, and then we can quickly move on to the rest of the agenda.’

The Commissioner groaned. ‘There’s more?’

‘Besides the exploding teenager, we’ve got the garlic-bread killer and the feral youths.’